


No Longer a Man Out of Time

by QuothTheRaven_Nevermore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Other, Sam is in it for like 8, bruce is in it for like 4 seconds, but they're important for the story so I tagged them, i tried to stay as close to the canon as possible so it's not stucky, the relationships are platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 19:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18708292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuothTheRaven_Nevermore/pseuds/QuothTheRaven_Nevermore
Summary: Steve's final scene rewritten.





	No Longer a Man Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> I'm mad about endgame and wrote this. There's spoilers so if you haven't seen it and don't want to see those then I don't recommend reading this. It's a rewrite of the scene where Steve comes back as an old man and gives the shield to Sam except with the Steve/Bucky best friend content we deserved.

“Go then,” Bucky says, smiling. Steve looks up at him, surprised. He was just talking, just wondering what if. He definitely didn’t expect Bucky to encourage his idea. “Go for the both of us.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, “I can’t.”

“Why not? What you do in the past won’t affect the future.”

“But what about our friends here? What about you?” Steve looks up at Bucky, their eyes meeting.

“I can get by on my own,” Bucky says, trying to sound as genuine as possible. In reality, he doesn’t know that he’ll be okay. Steve is his only lifeline to reality, to who he was before he was nobody.

“That’s the thing,” Steve says, remembering a time when he was younger, so much younger. “You don’t have to.”

Bucky smiles tightly at him, remembering too, a murky image of a downtrodden Steve flickering in the back of his mind.

“I don’t know if I’ll be okay without you,” Steve confesses. Even when he had nothing he had Bucky, in one form or another. The idea of not having him now, permanently, petrifies him. He doesn’t know how to exist without him, never has. They followed each other into war, ended up in the future together for god’s sake and now he’s just going to leave? He can’t.

“Come with me, please. It can be the two of us again, like old times,” Steve pleads.

Bucky looks at Steve, a strange expression on his face, resigned but happy still.

“Steve,” Bucky says in the tone of voice one that he heard so many mothers use to speak to their child that didn’t understand why their father wasn’t coming home from the war. Soft, like he’s trying to soften the blow he knows will be devastating. “I can't go back.”

“Why not,” Steve asks, silver rimming the bottom of his eyes.

“That time, that world, it isn’t for me,” Bucky says, the words burning his throat and tongue like poison as he says them. He doesn’t like to admit that he’s become so far removed from James Barnes that going back would feel like he’s taking over a stranger's life. But it’s the truth. “The man I was, the man my mama and sisters expect me to be, James, that’s not me anymore. I don’t want them to look at me with that disappointment in their eyes when they realize I'm not the Bucky they knew. Christ, Steve,” Bucky continues, confessing the truth that eats him up inside day and night, “I can hardly remember their faces anymore. I can’t be the man they loved, and it would be cruel to waltz back into their life a stranger and expect them to love me just the same.”

“Bucky,” Steve pleads, “I know your mama, she’d take you any way she could have you. Your sisters too.”

“Maybe,” Bucky concedes. As Steve starts to protest, Bucky cuts him off. “But there’s no need for me anymore. You’re not the same scrawny kid that gets into fights he can’t win, you can take care of yourself. You don’t need me anymore,” Bucky says, a melancholy smile forming on his lips.

Steve looks at him, a sorrow in his face that Bucky's only ever seen a handful of times. Once for Steve’s father, another one for his mother. To wipe that expression off of his face Bucky almost tells him he’ll go back too, but he stays quiet. “Is this the end of the line, then?” Steve asks, genuine terror in his voice.

Bucky lets out a short laugh, not mocking just...a little bit amused that those few words still mean so much. “No, never. It’s just a small pause so you can go live the life you deserve, Stevie. With the girl of your dreams and the family you’ve always wanted. A boatload of kids and a white picket fence. A dancing partner that you’ll never have to let go of even when the music ends.”

For so long his only mission was to find Bucky and now that he has him he can’t believe he’s going to let him go so easily. But a part of him, small and yearning, is crying out for a moment of rest, a moment of normalcy between the chaos that has been his entire life. Steve doesn’t think he’s ever had a second to rest since he came back into the world, and now he feels the weight of that all at once. As Steve stares at his hands, wondering if this is really what he wants to do he realizes. What if the world needs him? What if something else, something bigger comes to destroy all those he’s come to love? In that moment, Steve understands what Atlas felt like. But what if he just shrugged?

How can he leave? How can he not? His jaw clenches and unclenches as the debate rages inside him. It’s selfish, it’s absolutely and entirely selfish. And yet...doesn’t he deserve to be? He looks at Bucky’s face, who's looking at him with pleading in his eyes.

Steve nods, smiling. He can see it all now and his heart aches with want. “Okay,” he finally says.

“Okay?” Bucky asks, making sure he heard him correctly. He’s filled with an intense happiness. As if it were his own story that was getting a happy resolution. This is the best way this could have ended and he’s happy that at least one of them can find the peace they deserve.  

“Yeah, okay.”

“Good,” Bucky replies. His voice gets quiet as he says, “And Steve…?”

Steve lifts his head, looking up at Bucky.

“Say hi to my mama for me, will ya? And my sisters too. Tell them…” Bucky pauses for a second, swallowing the lump in his throat. Their faces are blurry now, faded with the years and the things done to his memory, but he’s always remembered what it was like to be loved unconditionally. And for a brief second he considers changing his mind, going back so he can feel that warmth again. But he can’t. He remembers what it was like to have a family but he doesn’t remember the family itself. Those women, his mom and sisters would be just as foreign to Bucky as he would be to them. And despite his most selfish desires, Bucky can’t bring himself to do that to them, to make them love a stranger.

Bucky takes a shuddering breath, blinking away the tears in his eyes. “Tell then I love them, _so much_ and I never forgot about them. Please, take care of them for me? Drop by every so often, and make sure they're okay?”

Steve nods. “You know I will, Buck. I doubt your mama's gonna let me leave once she realizes I’m back.”

Bucky laughs, remembering how his mom practically adopted Steve once his parents died. He’s sure it’ll be like her own son came back, better even. “Thank you,” he says hoarsely.

“Ready!” they hear Bruce shout from the machine.

Slowly they look back at him, as if they’re both just realizing that this is the end.

Together they toward the machine where Sam and Bruce are waiting. Bucky watches as Steve tells Bruce he’s ready to go.

“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” Steve says walking back to him, a small grin crossing his face.

“How can I,” Bucky asks, remembering the words from what feels like a thousand years ago. “You’re taking all the stupid with you.” And yet even now, they feel familiar. _Steve_ feels familiar. Different of course, they’re both different now, but as Steve embraces him, Bucky swears he can feel the prominent ribs and gangly arms of the kid in Brooklyn too proud to run from a fight.

Bucky watches as Steve steps into the platform, getting ready to go back. “I’ll miss you, buddy,” he tells him.

Steve looks at him, a glint in his eye, sorrow. Then a sad smile crosses his face and he’s gone.

A few seconds pass and Bucky waits with bated breath.

“Where is he?” Sam asks, looking to Bruce.

“I don’t know, he flew past his entrance,” Bruce explains as he presses buttons and flips switches on his panel.

Bucky looks around, having heard the sound of a body landing on wood a few seconds ago, too quiet for Bruce or Sam to pick up. His eyes land on the figure sitting on a bench, facing away from them.

“Guys.”  

Both men turn to look at Bucky then at Steve. Sam hurries over to him and they speak. It’s quick and before long Sam comes back and begins taking to Bruce.

As Bucky approaches his confusion grows. He can see that Steve’s hair is still a shade of dirty blonde, his shoulders still broad and powerful, albeit sagging forward as Steve rests his elbows on his knees and clasps his hands together. He looks the same.

“Stevie?” Bucky asks quietly, gently.

When Steve turns to look at him Bucky suddenly understands it all. Steve looks the same, but he’s different, changed. There’s a look in his eyes, that Bucky recognizes instantly because he’s seen it in his own face so many times. Steve looks weary for all the world. To anyone else, to Sam and Bruce, he looks identical. But Bucky recognizes the bags under his eyes, the haunted look that's taken residence in the depths of those baby blues. He sits down on the bench, one knee sticking out far enough to touch Steve’s. A simple point of contact, a way to let Steve know that Bucky's here with him.  

“I went back,” Steve says.

Bucky turns to look at Steve, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “And?”

“I went back,” Steve repeats. His hands tighten. “And I found her. I went to the dance hall right on time. And we danced all night. I explained to her what I could, about the stones, about the future, all of it. She understood most of it of course,” Steve chuckles, “She was always so brilliant, of course she understood it. I told her I would love to be her dance partner, if she’d still have me. She said if she said no there was a line of about a thousand girls willing to say yes.”

Bucky smiles, knowing how women used to fawn over Steve once they realized he was Captain America, and sometimes before.

“She said yes. And I tried, Bucky I really tried. To enjoy that life, that time, but I couldn’t. I tried to make it work with Peggy, tried to get a job as a firefighter.”

“Even then, you couldn’t stop helping people,” Bucky notes.

Steve chuckles, “I knew you’d get a kick out of that.” He’s quite for a second before saying, “I also went to see your mom. She’s the one that gave me the idea.”

Bucky’s breath catches in his throat.

“I tried to explain to her too, but I couldn’t explain all of it. You understand.”

Bucky nods, thankful that Steve spared her the painful details.

“She told me she’d accept you in any way, but she ‘knew her stubborn Jaime’ and that if you didn’t come back then it was for the best.”

A sob rips free of Bucky’s mouth against his will. It burns like fire, clawing its way out of his throat and into the world. He had completely forgotten that his mom called him that. That she was the _only_ person who had ever called him that.

Steve looks at him, eyes gleaming too. “She told me to give you this.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out two small squares. He holds them out and Bucky takes them with trembling fingers. It’s two pictures that pierce straight into his soul. One is of his family. His mom and sisters all together, so vibrant and full of life. Big grins outlined in lipstick and hair pinned back in a style Bucky remembers took eons to perfect. The other is of him and Steve. Scrawny, skinny, lanky Steve next to Bucky.

“That second one-” Steve says, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t show it to anyone else. It kind of ruins the illusion.”

Bucky barks a laugh, surprised and infinitely amused. Bucky runs his fingers over the faces of the women. Distant memories shove their way into the forefront of his consciousness, reclaiming their place in his mind. He takes the pictures and puts them into his pocket, still running his fingers along them unconsciously. He looks at Steve, waiting for the rest.

Steve turns somber again as he continues talking. “But every night when I’d go home I knew couldn’t stop thinking about the future. About everything that would come to happen regardless of how much I tried to stop it. I tried to work, to live that life, to fall in love. And...I couldn’t. I couldn’t just ignore all those people that would need my help.” Steve pauses for a second. “You know, when they pulled me out of the ice they called me the man out of time. They told me the world had moved on without me...I never imagined that I might have also moved on without it.”

To go back to everything he’s wanted for a century, only find that he no longer wanted it, Bucky doesn’t even want to imagine what that feels like.

“That world, that time...it wasn’t for me. Peggy knew it too,” Steve laughs softly, “I went home one day and she had the suit sitting on the couch. She told me that I wasn’t meant to be there, that my time was here, now. She said that all she wanted was for me to be happy and she could see that there, with her, I wasn’t, not really. Not like I thought I would be. So, I said goodbye to everyone, went out with Peggy for one last dance, and came back.” Steve wipes his eyes, his breathing ragged. Everything, he feels like he just lost everything all over again. He swallows roughly, the lump in this throat searing as it is pushed back down his esophagus.

Bucky sits next to him in silence, the weight of a century lingering around them.

“I saw it,” Steve says after a long minute. His voice is raw and pained.

Bucky turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised. “Saw what?”

“What it would have been like for another Steve Rogers, one who didn’t go in the ice. Some small mercy I suppose from whatever power the stones had. Steve marries Peggy and has a boatload of kids, names his first one James.”

Bucky’s eyes shine as he looks at Steve.

“You were there too,” Steve continues.

“Was I happy?” Bucky’s voice is ragged now too, thick with emotion.

“Absolutely,” Steve says, his lips moving up in a tragic smile. “You had a heap of kids too, troublemakers with bright blue eyes, all of them your splitting image.”

Bucky releases a breath, a choked sob following it. He wills his lip to stay firm and mourns.  

“But it wasn’t us,” Steve says, “Not really. It was a different Steve and a different Bucky. It was what could have been.” What we deserved, Steve thinks but doesn’t say. Why add more kindling to the fire fueled by their losses?

“Well,” Bucky says, trying to find the small glimmer of hope in this shit show they call a life, “whatever universe that James Barnes exists in, I hope he’s always happy.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “Me too.”

They both look out toward the water, trying to imagine themselves in that other universe. The weight of their sacrifices hangs heavy between them, a more deafening silence than that of a grave falling over them.

“What’ll you do now?”  Bucky finally asks.

“I don’t know,” Steve answers honestly. “I-I don’t know,” Steve tried again and fails. For the first time in his life he has time, he can go anywhere, do anything, and it’s suffocating. “When I was back in time I was so grateful because I could finally be just Steve Rogers. But...I didn’t know who he was anymore. I’ve spent so long in the suit, carrying that shield, that it became who I am. Even when I was back in time, with everything I’d ever wanted sitting in front of me, all I could think of was that shield sitting in my attic, waiting to be used. But if I’m in the suit, them I can’t be Steve. And I want to be. I want to get to know Steve Rogers again.”

Bucky looks at his friends, eyes soft. He knows what that’s like, wanting to get to know this person whose name you share. He felt like a stranger in his own skin for decades and some days he still does, but he’s grateful to have had the time to get to this place. He desperately wants that for his best friend too.

“I had a support group you know,” Steve tells Bucky, pride in his voice. “We meet every week, just a couple of us, talk about how to move on after everything changed.” Steve smiles. “I think I needed it as much as they did.”

“Why don’t you keep it going then?” Bucky asks, “They probably need you more than ever now.”

“I can’t,” Steve tells him, his own frustration growing. “I’ll be too busy trying to stop the next threat, I’ll always be too busy.” Bucky watches his friend’s shoulders slump forward once more.

“I don’t want to be Captain America again, not ever,” Steve confesses. Just saying it makes him fill with disgust. This gift he was given, this power that no other person has had or will ever have again, he should love it, appreciate it, be on his knees giving thanks for having been blessed with it. It saved his life, more than once. “But leaving the world without him, I don’t think I could do that either.”

“What if you didn’t have to?” Bucky says.

Steve’s eyebrows knit together, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Bucky says, unzipping the shield from the bag it’s carried in. Steve averts his eyes and the familiar red and white stripes come into view. Bucky looks at it, his confidence in this idea growing. “Like you said, it’s just a suit, a shield. Anyone can wear it. What if you gave it away, passed the torch?”

“To who? To you?” Steve asks, his face uncertain.

Bucky laughs, “No, god no, Stevie. I’m pretty sure you can’t be America’s golden boy when you’ve done even half the things I have.”

Steve lets out a soft laugh, “No, I suppose you can’t. Who then?”

Bucky turns to look behind them both. Sam and Bruce as talking about something, the former making the latter roar with laughter. When Steve looks back at Bucky there’s hope in his eyes. As Steve watches Sam he feels his breaths come easier. Yes. This he can do.

“Ok,” Steve says, smiling so brightly Bucky’s sure his face must hurt. Bucky returns it, feeling the same way that he did anytime he helped Steve in back alley scraps. Like he’s finally done his job and protected him. “And who knows,” Steve says, “Maybe one day I’ll go back. When the serum has run its course and I’m ready to live one final lifetime. Once I’m too old and gray to be of any help here and the fate of the world doesn’t depend on me anymore.”

“I sure hope so, Stevie.” Bucky says, although he knows Steve won’t. Steve will fight until his very last day, until the last breath leaves his lungs. It’s what made him worthy, what made him a good man. Bucky knows and Steve knows it too, but neither of them say anything. Let them bask in this fantasy for just one moment. They know their only respite from the fate of the world, universe now, will come once they’re well and truly gone, buried under the earth they tried so hard to save. They only time they’ll get to stop and smell the roses will be once they can see their families again, in whatever world comes after this one.

Steve turns back to Sam, watching as Bruce explains something to him and Sam tries his hardest to act like he understands any of the science Bruce is talking about. Steve laughs and Bucky turns to see what he’s looking at, then laughs too.

“Why don’t you go grab him for me?” Steve asks Bucky, “Before Bruce realizes that Sam has no idea what he’s been saying for the last ten minutes.” 

“Glad to,” Bucky answers, hauling himself up. He’s been on the receiving end of Bruce’s science talks before and knows what it’s like. The man is brilliant but often forgets that not everyone else is too. “Hey, Sam!” Bucky calls out once he’s close enough.

Sam looks at Bucky gratefully. “Yeah?”

“Old man wants to see you,” Bucky says, lifting his hand over his shoulder and pointing a thumb at Steve. “Has something he wants to ask you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please give me your opinions! This was the first story I wrote and finished in literal years and really want to know what y'all think. Also come follow me on Tumblr to scream about marvel [here](http://rosybucky.tumblr.com)


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